


Comfort Food

by coffeeandfeathers



Category: Pushing Daisies
Genre: Angst, Comfort Eating, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Food Kink, Overeating, Weight Gain, stuffing kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-20
Updated: 2015-05-20
Packaged: 2018-03-31 12:29:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3978046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeeandfeathers/pseuds/coffeeandfeathers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the end, they figured him out in Couer de Couer, where the whole mess began. He stood in the daisy field with Chuck, his arms dangling at his sides, when her hand reached for his.<br/>“Chuck!” he started, snatching his hand away, but she was too fast, grabbing at him. Her fingers felt clammy, almost wet, every tendon tensed against his palm<br/>“Chuck! You can’t!” She gazed up at him, pupils dilated, lips fat and purple as a corpse’s. Then she went slack.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Comfort Food

In the end, they figured him out in Couer de Couer, where the whole mess began. He stood in the daisy field with Chuck, his arms dangling at his sides, when her hand reached for his.

“Chuck!” he started, snatching his hand away, but she was too fast, grabbing at him. Her fingers felt clammy, almost wet, every tendon tensed against his palm.

“Chuck! You can’t!” She gazed up at him, pupils dilated, lips fat and purple as a corpse’s. Then she went slack.

“Oh god, Chuck?” This time, he couldn’t let her fall. She hadn’t spoken, didn’t even say goodbye, just lay limp in his arms like a doll of herself.

The population of Couer de Couer was on him in an instant. Previously, only he and Chuck occupied the daisy field, but at the moment of death, it seemed as if every charming antique store and bakery emptied around them.

“Burn the witch!” Someone yelled from the back of the crowd, and then he was running, leaving Chuck’s body behind. The mob followed, screaming in tongues like at a Pentecostal church. What felt like a small boulder slammed into his back and he fell face first into the wilted daisies with the cold barrel of a Glock against his jugular.

“Time to go to sleep,” a garbled voice whispered too close to his ear, and the gun went off.

Ned awoke gasping, pawing desperately at his slick face and neck in the dark. It was all still there, his nose and mouth intact, and he drew himself into a ball in bed, his heart beating against his knees. In the next bed, Chuck murmured and rolled over in her sleep, the mass of curls obscuring her face from view.

“Dream,” Ned whispered to himself to keep from waking her. “Only a dream.” Hearing his own voice helped calm him somehow, but the blind panic still roared in his chest. Anxious dreams plagued him constantly as a child, and after resurrecting Chuck, they’d come back in full force. Ned’s stomach twisted inside him at the thought of her cold, grey face. He needed comfort.

And for Ned, comfort meant pie. The bedroom door creaked as he opened it and stepped out into the darkened hallway, where the kitchen waited. Ned kept the fridge stocked with pies from competitor’s stores for this very occasion, even though he’d never admit that to Chuck. She didn’t need to know about his compulsive binge eating to deal with panic attacks, or the fact that he could easily put away a whole pie and a half gallon of milk without getting sick. Besides, she already looked at him funny when he reached up to hoist bags of flour from the top shelf and his t-shirt rose up around his middle or curled up on the sofa with a cup of coffee resting on his admittedly ample stomach.  
Not ample, Ned decided, padding into the kitchen and opening the refrigerator door. Just… there. Definitely there. Baking hadn’t been so kind to him waist-wise; his jeans were starting to pinch in places he definitely didn’t want them to pinch and left angry red rings around his belly even when he’d only been wearing them for a couple of hours. He wasn’t fat, necessarily. Just comfortable.

Even so, guilt rose in Ned’s chest as he pulled a pie from the fridge. Chocolate, with graham cracker crust and a veritable mountain of whipped cream piled on top, one of his competitor’s. Wasn’t as good as his, but it would do the trick just fine. He grabbed a fork from the drawer and sat on the kitchen floor with the pie in his lap. Chuck didn’t need to know about his little ritual, about how he ate and ate until there wasn’t any room in him for anything except exhaustion. Chuck certainly didn’t need to know that this was his third pie this week, or that eating himself sick was slowly becoming the only way he could get to sleep without waking due to nightmares of increasing severity. The nightmares usually had the same spin on them, involving Chuck’s death or people discovering his powers, but Ned still had trouble erasing them from his mind after he woke. He put a forkful of pie in his mouth, then another.

Don’t think, just eat, he told himself, cramming bite after bite down his throat. He took a swig of milk from the half gallon jug in the fridge, then went back to the pie. Each mouthful went down smooth, punctuated by occasional gulps of milk, and the dream is starting to fade half a pie later.

Another quarter in and Ned’s stomach protested, churning around the sugar and heavy cream so unceremoniously forced into it. Ned ignored his body, as he was so wont to do in these circumstances, and took another drink to drown out the uncomfortable rumbles emanating from under his ribs.

“Cut it out.” He rubbed slow circles into his belly, his skin hot under his t-shirt. By the last bite, even the elastic on his pajama pants was starting to feel a little tight, and he almost considered slipping them off when the hall light flicked on.

“Ned?” Before he could hide the evidence or even come up with a good excuse, Chuck stepped into the darkened kitchen.

“Ned, what are you doing? It’s almost three in the mor-” Chuck stopped, looked down at him. God, he must have looked like hell, half asleep and smeared with chocolate.

“Uh…I couldn’t sleep.”

“Is that a pie tin? Did you eat a whole pie?”

Ned opened his mouth to respond, but a whimper rose from his belly and he just hiccupped.

“Ned,” Chuck said, crouching down next to him. “What’s going on?”

“I… I can’t explain it.” He’s unravelling now, too embarrassed to say anything more. The pie churned inside him, and for a second he was afraid he’d be sick all over Chuck.  
“I had a nightmare,” he finally said, nudging the empty tin and jug away from him. “Couldn’t sleep.”

“So you ate a whole pie?” Chuck sat on the floor, messy hair illuminated in the glow from the open fridge.

“It helps.” Ned drew his knees up to his chest and buried his face in his arms. “I’m disgusting, I know. I can’t stop. I can’t sleep without it. I’m sorry. I had a nightmare about touching you and I can’t get back to sleep unless…” he trailed off.

“Unless you put yourself into a food coma.” A drawer opened above Ned’s head and then a warm, oven-mitted hand caressed his ruffled hair. “You should have woken me.”

“I’m disgusting.”

“You’re not disgusting, you’re hurt.”

“I’ve gotten fat. I can’t stop stuffing myself and now I’ve gotten fat.”

“You aren’t fat, you’re a baker.”

“Look at all this.” Ned pinched his aching stomach and shook it hard. “Look how much there is. I’ve got a potbelly.”

“Stop it.” Chuck’s oven mitts ran down the back of his neck to his shoulders, kneading in gentle circles. “You’re fine.”

“I’m weak.”

“Ned…”

Ned clutched at his hair. “I am. I’m a circus freak who can’t even touch the person I love most in the world. I’m selfish.”

“Stop it. Listen to me.” Chuck took his face in her mitts, stopping the tirade before it could go further. “You’re okay. You’re not weak. You’re scared. Everyone’s a little scared sometimes.”

“I don’t know what else to do.” He sniffled, wrapping arms around his stomach. “Please don’t leave me.”

Chuck shook her head, ran the mitts down his neck to his shoulders. “I won’t. Do you want some tea? Your stomach doesn’t sound too pleased with you.”

“It’s not.” Ned tightened his grip, hoping to quiet the unpleasant noises his body made as it tried to process the amount of food he’d dumped into it. “And yes please.”

“Ginger helps with stomachaches. I’ll make that. Do you mind if I turn on the light?”

“I guess.” The sudden glare hurt, and Ned stayed curled up on the floor while Chuck put on hot water and dug around in the cupboards for teabags.

“Here,” she said, passing him a wet paper towel. “You’ve got a little chocolate on your face.”

Ned buried his face into the towel and moaned. “I’m really gross.”

“Cut it out. You’re just fine.” She patted him again with the oven mitt. “And besides, I think you look good with a little weight on you.”

“You do?” Ned looked up, but Chuck had already turned away, her ears burning. “But you keep looking at me weird… I thought you didn’t like it. I was going to stop.”

“I keep looking at you because you’re cute. And because I want to touch you so badly, especially now.”

“Really?” Ned sniffled and ran the back of his wrist over his face.

“Really. You look healthier and happier. I like to see you that way. I hope that isn’t too strange.”

“No, no. It makes me feel better, actually.”

Chuck smiled and set a steaming mug on the floor before sitting down with her tea. “I’m glad. Drink.”

Ned pressed the mug to his lips. The tea was still hot, but it felt nice cutting through the cold in his stomach. “Thanks.”

“You should just wake me if you have a nightmare. I’ll talk you down so you don’t have to stuff yourself, okay?”

“Okay. Thank you.”

“What are girlfriends for? Aside from kissing, of course.” She laughed and pressed an oven mitt to his forehead before kissing the back of it. Ned started to laugh too, but an angry growl rolled up from his stomach and he curled back in on himself.

“Still hurts, huh? Let me help.” Chuck pulled on the other oven mitt and slowly worked her hands under Ned’s t-shirt, rubbing both palms into his swollen belly.  
“I read somewhere that this helps with indigestion,” she explained, and Ned burped in reply.

“Sorry.” He covered his mouth with his hands until the mitts forced out another burp.

“Am I hurting you?"

“No, not at all. It feels good actually. Could you…” he rested his hands on top of the mitts and guided them up and down his stomach, which convulsed with hiccups at every touch. Chuck’s eyes widened as the mitts worked into his abdomen, and Ned smiled.

“You want me to find some plastic wrap?”

“Yes. Yes I do.”


End file.
